Chapter 836: Handover (4)

The underground hollow located in District 44. A gray zone surrounded by jamming, its location undisclosed by satellite coordinates.

A vast corridor lay beneath the dark stairs. Lennok sat with his eyes closed in the examination room, which glowed with a pale, scattered light.

He wore only a thin shirt on his upper body, thin connectors attached in various places, drawing out his magic.

“Good. Just like that. You’re doing well.”

Beside Lennok, who was concentrating, a sticky voice echoed, as if something was caught in his throat.

A gaunt-looking young man in a wheelchair stared intently at the real-time graphs being displayed, not even blinking.

“Your magic manipulation efficiency is still unreal. An Arch-Wizard wouldn’t care about the disparity between body and mind, but even considering that, it’s an incredible figure.”

A faint glow, as if mechanical devices were embedded in his body, shimmered around the young man as he pushed up his thick spectacles.

Whirrrr!

Meanwhile, Lennok ignored the young man’s words and focused on manipulating his magic with his eyes closed.

It was an experiment to measure speed and accuracy, responding to signals coming through the attached connectors, sending or retracting magic.

The fluctuating graph on the screen coiled into a complex trajectory, then instantly straightened into a parallel line, regaining stability.

Beeeeeep…!!

At the same time, the number [27] appeared on the graph.

The young man, leaning forward precariously on his wheelchair with his scrawny body, murmured with faint admiration.

“Pseudo-Magic Manipulation Test, Stage 27 passed… From here on, it’s essentially not a standard designed to be passed.”

Even amidst this, the graph continued to climb in an upward curve on the screen, rapidly changing its measurement units.

Just as it was about to reach above 31, past 28, 29, and 30, the young man immediately nodded and shut off the equipment.

Flick!

“That’s enough. I think I’ve seen what I needed to see. Let’s move on to other examinations.”

“…Why did you stop?” Lennok muttered, opening his eyes at last.

“It’s been a while, and I wanted to test how far I could go.”

For a crude setup that tested magic manipulation with attached connectors, the test’s standards and difficulty were surprisingly high.

Even Lennok, an 8-level Arch-Wizard, had to concentrate to some extent after Stage 25.

Having a competitive urge for the first time in a while, he had wanted to test his limits, but it was truly disappointing that it was cut short when he still had plenty of reserves.

“You crazy bastard…”

The young man shook his head, looking utterly dumbfounded at Lennok.

“What you just did was a test sheet software created in Ars Nova to evaluate wizards’ ranks.”

“And?”

“Among all the patients and wizards I’ve ever examined, no one has reached Stage 30, and beyond that, there’s no measurement standard to begin with. If you had continued the test, the software itself would have broken.”

“…”

“Now as then, your magic manipulation is truly unprecedented. To think that even Ars Nova’s standards struggle to measure its potential…”

“You say that, but you look pretty pleased.”

Lennok, who had detached the connectors from his arm, glanced back at the young man and asked.

“Was the test I just took really that entertaining?”

As Lennok said, the young man shook his head as if exasperated, yet a faint smile played on his lips.

A strange attitude, as if the situation itself was too amusing to bear.

The young man’s lips twitched at Lennok’s words. “No, that… Yes, you’re right. It certainly is a bit funny.”

“What is?”

“Until Ars Nova fell, we believed that only that city could be the sole answer.”

“…”

“We thought there was no need to consider other possibilities, except for the timid, endangered species outside. But what about now?”

The young man chuckled self-deprecatingly.

“The central city has fallen, and instead, there are talents outside the city who exceed our standards. When I think about it now, how ludicrous it all was…”

What was the young man thinking when he saw Lennok pass Ars Nova’s test all at once?

It was a self-deprecating lament that only someone who had lived directly in the central city could utter.

The dying cry of a survivor who, having made that now-destroyed city his hometown, had lived there his entire life before being exiled.

A sneer reserved solely for him, directed at a life and civilization that had already perished.

Instead of answering, Lennok gazed silently at the young man, who then spun his wheelchair around.

“Well, someone like you, a genius, probably wouldn’t empathize with that. Forget about it.”

“…”

“It seems your magic manipulation has already been optimized, so we’ll skip that part of the examination. It’s not my area of expertise anyway.”

The young man’s assertion that it wasn’t his area of expertise, despite possessing Ars Nova’s magic manipulation test software and the insight to judge its standards.

But Lennok knew that wasn’t entirely a lie.

The owner of this examination room, where Lennok had come, was once an actual resident of Ars Nova and an exceptional doctor.

The vampire doctor, Alejandro Murphy.

An authority specializing in self-examination fields like blood and genetic analysis, and one of the very few survivors who escaped when the central city of Ars Nova fell.

Now, he was an eccentric who had cut all ties, isolating himself in a dark underground clinic, engrossed in his own ventures.

The connection to this vampire, known by almost no one in Vulcan, was possible thanks to Madam, who was also a vampire.

It was an almost coincidental encounter, but now he was a doctor who could provide Lennok with significant help.

Though his personality was erratic, there were few others who could examine Lennok’s body and provide such a diagnosis.

Click!

Murphy, carrying an armful of syringes and needles, unhesitatingly plunged them into Lennok’s shoulder.

“…”

Lennok frowned, but said nothing, merely shaking his head.

But Murphy seemed annoyed even by that slight movement, and patted Lennok’s back.

“Just hold still. It’s distracting, makes it hard to concentrate.”

“If I forcibly control my physical reactions with my will-thought, it will only make the examination more difficult.” Lennok retorted indifferently.

“I’m just trying to react as naturally as possible.”

“A grandiose excuse, befitting a Supreme Wizard.” Murphy snorted.

“Isn’t the very reason for all this trouble that you don’t follow my diagnoses in the first place?”

“Diagnosis?”

“Life support device. The data record hasn’t been updated for almost over a month.”

Murphy, who had plunged dozens of needles into Lennok’s body, his eyes gleaming sharply.

“Do you think I customized the life support device into a cane for you to carry around for nothing?”

“…”

“Considering your peculiar constitution, one normally has to compare the ebb and flow of your condition with accumulated data to find the cause, but you only show up at such ambiguous times… Truly admirable.”

“…There’s a reason.”

Realizing there was no room for excuse, Lennok subtly evaded the answer.

Lennok himself was aware that he had barely carried the life support device lately.

He wore it as Van, but he didn’t carry it during urgent battles or desperate situations.

Moreover, he had rarely engaged in public activities as Adamant Thunder recently, so it was natural that the life support device records hadn’t been updated much.

“Strictly speaking, I didn’t come here only when I was on the verge of death. I’m just trying to create an opportunity when I have time.”

“Are you trying to play word games with me?”

“…”

Murphy ignored Lennok and stuck the needles into various parts of his upper body, then connected tubes to all the needles.

A bizarre sight: Lennok sitting in the middle of the vast examination room, surrounded by dozens of medical devices and inserted tubes.

As Murphy wheeled back and activated the equipment, Lennok’s blood began to flow out, drop by drop, through his veins.

Instead of drawing a large amount of blood from one tube, he was drawing blood simultaneously from multiple body parts through dozens of tubes.

“There’s an inflection point where the magic projection rate of blood changes based on the extent of vascular damage and over-recovery.”

Noticing Lennok’s gaze fixed on his own flowing blood, Murphy added an explanation.

“If you had come right after you were injured, there wouldn’t be a need for all this, but I have to forcibly create a control group this way. Don’t complain.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Be quiet.”

“…”

Murphy quickly finished drawing blood, then immediately removed the needles from Lennok’s body.

As he applied the hemostatic agent Lennok offered onto his skin, the bleeding stopped instantly.

It would take some time for the wounds to heal, but even if not, Lennok’s entire body was covered in bruises anyway, so it didn’t matter.

“Hah…”

Even when gathered, the total volume was only about one blood bag.

But Murphy stared at the collected blood from Lennok with ecstatic eyes, as if gazing upon a supreme treasure.

“Even after a long time, the convergence rate is still astonishing. Beautiful…”

“The owner is listening. Could you refrain from such unpleasant remarks?”

“Shut up. What does a non-vampire like you know about the aesthetics of fresh blood?”

“I don’t particularly want to know…”

Lennok chuckled, leaning back on the examination room sofa with his arms crossed.

“There have just been too many people coveting it. In that regard, you and Madam don’t seem very different.”

“Ha, that…”

He snorted, but unlike before, Murphy couldn’t deny it.

That was proof of the immense value of a high-level wizard’s blood to vampires like Murphy.

“Enough. Just give me the results. How long will it take to upload the results to the database and compare them?”

What backed Murphy’s skill and expertise wasn’t just his insight or knowledge.

It was the examination records of Ars Nova that he had brought with him when he escaped the central city.

Though only a fraction, just examining the patient examination cases recorded in that database was of immense help.

In the first place, Lennok had sought Murphy for this examination specifically to utilize that database.

“…Wait a moment. I can’t input the collected blood directly into the database. It needs minimal adjustment to be comparable.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could finish quickly.”

“We’ve done this before. Have some patience. In the first place, why didn’t you come to me immediately after fighting the Ghost Princess?”

At that moment, Lennok’s fingers, which had been idly tapping his knee, paused.

Murphy, paying no mind to Lennok’s reaction, inserted the blood into a centrifuge and spoke.

“The physical records of a high-level wizard fresh from combat are very valuable data. If you come in time, I’ll handle the diagnosis for free, so remember to visit without fail.”

“…You knew about Peshia Grisbern. Who told you?”

“Have you forgotten that I came to this city working at Deadrise’s trauma hospital?”

Murphy smirked.

“Even though I don’t work with them anymore, I occasionally hear news about the generals… Truly serious problems get reported to me too.”

“News about the generals, huh…”

Was he thinking that Lennok’s injuries were from fighting Peshia?

After all, Adamant Thunder’s last official combat record was indeed fighting the Ghost Princess, so it wasn’t strange.

“More importantly, while the database is running, I have something I’d like to discuss briefly.”

Murphy, who had approached the curtained window of the examination room, turned back to Lennok and grinned.

“That business we discussed last time, would you be interested in collaborating again?”

“Business? I never did business with you—”

Lennok, who had spoken that far, remembered a past incident and gave a bitter laugh.

“…The blood-selling venture, you mean.”

The first time Lennok visited Murphy, Murphy had proposed experimenting with Lennok’s blood, much like now.

A blood-selling venture that would supply the entire continent with superhuman blood as a doping agent.

At that time, hadn’t Murphy used Lennok’s blood as a showcase to promote his business to his clients?

Lennok remembered that while his blood was never actually sold as a doping agent, the showcase itself ended quite comically.

“It seems a conclusion was already reached on that matter. Is there still room for more experimentation now?”

When they had injected Lennok’s blood into condemned criminals and monsters, the result was that higher-tier superhumans couldn’t handle the power and self-destructed.

At that time, they experimented on 5-level superhumans, so now, to increase the data, they would have to target superhumans of an even higher level.

As Lennok tilted his head, wondering if this vampire was thinking of capturing 6-level or higher superhumans for human experimentation—

“No, that’s not it.”

Noticing Lennok’s thoughts, Murphy smiled with a sinister expression.

“I have a very interesting project commissioned by one of my clients, and I think your help would allow me to process it quickly.”

“…”

“The conditions are the same. A portion of the blood I just drew will be used for the showcase, and if you don’t agree, the remaining blood will be immediately discarded.”

Murphy spoke leisurely, leaving Lennok in silence.

“Just like last time, it will only be used as a control group for comparing performance. Your blood won’t be circulated, nor will your identity be revealed. In the first place, if I pulled such a shallow trick on you, I wouldn’t survive.”

“If it ends similarly to last time, I wonder if there’s a need for another experiment…”

Lennok, leaning back with his arms crossed, nodded towards Murphy, who stood before the curtain.

“I’ll decide after hearing what kind of project it is.”

“Alright, the gist of the project is simple: forcibly enhancing incorrigible criminals to raise them as hunting dogs. The doping agents I’ve been developing will be used in this process. However…”

“However?”

“I’m not the only one participating in this project.”

Saying so, Murphy dramatically pulled back the curtain covering the examination room window.

Whoosh!

Beyond the window, the scene of a massive underground arena was broadcast on a wide screen.

Inside the cages on the arena floor, various fiercely-looking individuals were confined, glaring at each other.

Around them, thousands of spectators were shouting with fervent cheers.

Waaaahhh!!!

Above the heads of the criminals trapped in the cages, photos of Murphy and several other people appeared.

It was at that moment Lennok realized these were the photos of the ‘collaborators,’ those participating in this project alongside Murphy.

“We’ll gather business operators who process and sell superhuman blood, and compare whose creation is the most outstanding.”

Murphy said as Lennok frowned.

“In other words, a Grand Doping Tournament will be held.”

“…”

“One of the clients is a City Council Senator. It will start this evening in the Undeveloped Zone and end within a day. What do you say?”

Murphy’s eyes glistened as he gazed at the underground arena beyond the screen.

“Among the doping agents made from the blood of countless superhumans, wouldn’t you like to test whose blood is truly remarkable?”